The National Security Act of 1947 and the Disabling of America’s Decision-Making Brain

The Steady State | Steven A. Cash

Among the most enduring lessons of World War II was the necessity of coherent, integrated, and apolitical decision-making in matters of national security. Victory in that war had required the coordination of diplomacy, military power, industrial capacity, intelligence, and public will. The architects of America’s postwar order—men like George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and Harry Truman—understood that winning the peace required no less.

The National Security Act of 1947 was their answer. Enacted in the crucible of emerging Cold War tensions, the Act provided a structural framework that enabled the United States to make informed, expert-driven decisions over decades of strategic challenge. As amended and evolved, the Act birthed institutions that became pillars of American strength: the National Security Council (NSC), the Central Intelligence Agency, and a more unified Department of Defense. These tools were not ends in themselves but were meant to serve a decision-making process—one in which intelligence, diplomacy, military assessments, and interagency coordination were brought to bear in service of the President, and ultimately, the nation. Section 2 of the Act makes this purpose unmistakably clear:

The Congress declares that it is the intention of this Act and the policy of the United States to provide a comprehensive program for the future security of the United States; to provide for the establishment of integrated policies and procedures for the departments, agencies, and functions of the Government relating to national security. 50 U.S.C. §401, National Security Act of 1947

In plainer terms, the National Security Act was designed to bring order to the chaos of wartime stovepipes. It created connective tissue—a nervous system—for a vast federal apparatus. When functioning as intended, this system gave the President access to the best analysis, the clearest options, and the hardest truths, drawn from across the government. It was, at its best, a bulwark against impulsivity and politicization.

Today, that system is imperiled.

President Donald Trump not only disregards the careful architecture of the 1947 Act—he actively undermines it. He denigrates intelligence professionals and discards their briefings. He marginalizes the NSC, sidelining its members, and decimating its staff, is hollowing out the State Department, and treats the interagency process as a nuisance to be bypassed. Expertise is suspect, dissent unwelcome, and process an impediment to ego.

If America’s national security decision-making system were a single human being, Trump would have blinded it, deafened it, disorganized its brain, and atrophied many of its muscles—save those he flaunted like imagined biceps in a flexed pose for political theater.

The National Security Act was not a mere bureaucratic exercise. It was a recognition that power without structure is chaos. The Act gave the presidency a mind, not just a will. To discard it—or to cripple its machinery—is to make the United States more vulnerable to miscalculation, more susceptible to threats, and more likely to stumble blindly into crisis.

What’s required now is not nostalgia, but restoration. The system envisioned in 1947—adaptable, inclusive of congressional oversight, and guided by principle—remains essential. We must rebuild it before we need it again. And the time is now, as Congress faces war in the Middle East, with ripple effects being felt around the world. Congress passed the National Security Act in 1947 – decades later, it is essential that Congress insists that it is used to keep us safe.

Steven A Cash served as a former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's office before joining the CIA in 1994 as Assistant General counsel and subsequently serving as an intelligence officer in the Directorate of Operations. In 2001 he joined the Senate Select committee on Intelligence as Counsel and designee-staffer to Senator Diane Feinstein. He later served as a senior staffer in the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security and the Department of Energy. In the private sector he has advised on national security, counterintelligence, and technology policy and served on the Biological Sciences Experts Group under the Director of National Intelligence. Mr. Cash is currently the Executive Director of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 290 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.